Jonathan Wynne-Jones is the Religious Affairs and Media Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. He was described as "the scourge of church and state" at the Britsh Press Awards for 2009. He tweets @JonWynneJones.

He was Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University after all.

However, there are signs that he may be cracking up.

The first indication that he was losing it came in an interview with Rod Liddle in the Spectator in which the vacuity of one of his most famous theories was exposed.

Faced with an example of how his selfish-gene theory can be "perfectly counter-Darwinian" all he could muster was: "Yes. But it happens to be true."Er, not one of the best thought-out defences it has to be said.

Shown up by Liddle, who, as far as I'm aware, hasn't even got a science degree let alone a professorship, Dawkins's latest comments suggest that Darwin's rottweiler has gone barking.

Upset by an article that I wrote on a new atheist initiative that plans to help establish societies in schools to rival Christian unions, his latest defence is to resort to defaming me on his blog.It's fortunate he went into academia rather than law, as Johnnie Cochran he ain't.

"You will see that AHS is a federation of UNIVERSITY students, with, as far as I can tell, no interest in SCHOOLS at all." The emphasis is made by him for effect.Rather embarrassing then that a few comments later, the co-founder of the AHS confirms that, to borrow Dawkins's words from above, "it happens to be true".

Except this time there is hard evidence.Not wanting to let the facts get in the way of a good smear though, he goes on to accuse me of making "another egregious lie".

In the story, I included a comment from him claiming that the findings confirm that much of the population is "pig-ignorant" about science. (Not a great admission for someone who was Professor for Public Understanding of Science to be making, one would have thought.)

The poll tells us what we already knew, he said. Now, on his website, he's saying that I was lying to report him saying this.

Such a display of being precious and thin-skinned would be excessive if he was correct, but it's incredibly strange given that he's not.

His language reveals how intolerant and agressive he is towards people with whom he disagrees, regardless of the fact that he is in the wrong.

How deeply ironic then that Dawkins turns out to be just as stridently intolerant and bigoted as the religious fundamentalists he is always ranting about.Here, for the record, is the e-mail exchange between Dawkins and myself for you to make up your own mind about whether I was making an "egregious lie" about his "pig-ignorant" comments.

You'll see that I don't actually accuse you of quoting me out of context. I leave that to anybody who reads it to decide for themselves. So, why don't you look at it and decide for YOURself. You asked me what I put it down to (the finding that lots of people believe in creationism) and I replied (bold type added for emphasis).

Well, probably mostly ignorance. To put it into perspective, the Eurobarometer survey of 2005 found that 19% of the population of Britain think it takes one month for the Earth to orbit the sun. Nobody could say that this is due to wicked atheists scaring them with bleak and barren philosophy! If you think it takes one month for the Earth to orbit the sun, you are just plain pig-ignorant. Evidently 19% of the British population are sufficiently ignorant to believe that. The same survey found that 28% of British people believe 'the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs'. With that level of ignorance of science generally, it is hardly surprising if a comparable number believe in creationism.

That was the end of our exchange. You'll notice that my phrase 'pig ignorant' referred to the 19% of people in Britain who think it takes one month for the Earth to orbit the sun. My intention was to rebut the charge that 'aggressive atheism' had driven people into the arms of the creationists, and I did so by pointing out that there is also widespread ignorance about other scientific matters.

Notice the context of my 'pig ignorant' remark. Now see how you used it:- 'Prof Dawkins expressed dismay at the findings of the ComRes survey, of 2,060 adults, which he claimed were confirmation that much of the population is "pig-ignorant" about science.'

What do you think? If you were a reader and you read that . . . what is your honest opinion?